Sunday, January 04, 2009

Coconut Shrimp

I went to the new Filipino supermarket that opened nearby. The fish are in open iced displays, all whole, with all sorts of fish available that you never see in chain supermarkets. Fresh anchovies, for example. You have to hand carry the unwrapped fish to a special counter and get it weighed. After that, if you want, they'll fry it for free or fillet it. I'm going to try the fried thing, but the fish I saw getting wrapped up after the fried treatment looked as if it should be heading for Forest Lawn.

The fish are so fresh that they still have wondrous colors, and their eyes aren't dim-- for a weakling like me it's hard not to feel sad.

But Jon's away, and that means time to cook weird recipes. Like last night I cooked spaghetti with anchovies and arugula. But I didn't have arugula and the lettuce I threw in just didn't have much punch. I ate most of the anchovies out of the can, myum.

Cut to the punch. Any tropical vacation is not complete without coconut shrimp and some tasty dip. I tried to make it before with no success, but this time, I could have opened my own chain restaurant. Zowee's.

Rather than copy the recipe, I'll link to it here, (it's from simply recipes, a great cooking resource), because the steps involved are so exact, and once you learn them you won't make mistakes again. Or maybe you will. I probably will. But tonight all I needed was a giant tiki sitting across the table from me to share my exquiz shrimp and dippin sauce.

Tomorrow I'm going for the fried squid. Care to join me? Oh and the flying triangle in my miserable illustration is one of those wondrous scary defense things that fly low over certain parades, and buzzed the racetrack at Santa Anita the other day when I was there.

8 comments:

Hey stray, it's not deep fried, just about an inch of peanut oil in a cast iron pan. The trick is to roll the shrimp first in flour, then in the egg coconut mix, then in the coconut flakes, and it has to be the sweetened coconut, in that exact order. Reason for that is explained in the recipe.

Sally'Your write up on FREUDE in ASIFA-SF newsletter has done my heart so good. FREUDE and the era of the late 1970's film scene is like a memory of magic! (I once did the 35mm filmming of the Trailer you animated sometime in the late 1970's when I lived in Oakland). I have a commercial animation studio in Carlsbad, CA doing animation for the bio-information tech. sector. I am blessed: It Pays Very Well!!! Nothing to ever see in a festival, so it is as if I just disappeared. www.skydavid.comDennis "Sky" David Pies

It doesn't help that most fish have such sad looking faces. I bet if they looked smug it'd be easier to eat them.Working at the tropical fish shop for so long has impaired my taste for seafood- between seeing them alive (cute) and dead (remarkably stinky!) I Still kinda like trout, but even then I'll be thinking there's his lateral line, there's his adipose fin etc...

You'd think the triangle plane would freak out the horses but I guess they're used to it. Just like the planes coming in for a landing don't scare the horses at Hollywood park.